An Alternative Survivor's Guide to the United Kingdom
 

Evening all,

As some of you may recall a couple of years ago I posted some pieces on an alternative non canon Survivor's Guide to the United Kingdom and the attached documents form an update and an expansion to that work. Changes to the timeline I originally posted are relatively minor - basically I've moved the UK Capital to Winchester instead of Oxford (thanks Simonmark6 and DudeUK for that suggestion), changed slightly the area under HMG control (it now more accurately follows the canon SGUK) and generally tidied up a few bits I wasn't overly happy with in the original, mostly to do with the destruction of the central Government. I've also tidied up the order of battle for HM forces (thanks LouieD for your input to that) and added the Royal Navy and Royal Air Force. Other than that and the part on MI5, it's all new material, which I hope you'll find to be of interest.

Questions and comments are most welcome! The work is based on 01 June 2000 in a V1 timeline.

Part 1 - Timeline / Regional Guide

The Regional Guide is based on the Cold War civil defence regions, and uses county names in place at the end of the 80's, some of which have now changed. I had originally hoped to go into a fair degree of detail for each region, but unfortunately time has been my greatest enemy, so I've had to settle for a broader description of each region, though I have tried to include a few adventure "seeds". As this work focuses on the UK mainland only, Northern Ireland is not covered, other than in the timeline. I have changed the nuclear strikes very slightly - basically I've spared Birmingham but hit the ports at Felixstowe / Harwich and also High Wycombe (the latter because that was where I placed the Government's command bunker).

Part 2 - His Majesty's Government / HM Armed Forces / The Security Service / Scottish and Welsh Separatist Movements

Again, the listing for HM Armed Forces only refers to those units on the mainland that are still following HMG's orders. Some of the detail in this section was inspired by James Langham, while I'm indebted to LouieD for his input on the order of battle.

Part 3 - The Americans / the Soviets / the French

Short pieces on the three major foreign powers present in the UK. I plan to add the Dutch in the near future.

I'm also still working on Part 4, which will cover a selection of non Governmental lawful groups, e,g, the Norwich enclave, the Highland Coalition, and the Free City of Carlisle, and Part 5, which will cover marauder groups such as the Duke of Cornwall, Bloody Mary, and the North Preston Front. I hope to have all of that done by the end of the year.

Cheers

Dave

Thanks for the attribution.

Really nice write ups.

Please tell me the North Preston Front doesn't have characters called Lloydy, Spock and Diesel...

Great work - a few nitpicks

Should the Household Brigade be called the Guards Brigade?

22SAS doesn't have a Zulu Squadron - I assume this is deliberate, if not A, B, D or G Squadron should replace it.

I assume Comacchio's 51mm is mainly for illum, not many circumstances in nuclear weapon guarding or oil reg protection.

I would look at issuing some of the Welsh and Scottish militia .303s and double barreled shotguns, maybe with an SLR or L85 in the role of a squad automatic.

Looking forward to seeing more.

I was thinking it might be all quiet on that front :)

As an aside, I'd love a game of "Gurkha Tank Battle" :)

I am having trouble opening the one on HM Forces, but cn open the others. Can a fresh copy be uploaded or a .pdf file?
Thanks!

Other than that, awesome work!

-Dave

Scratch that-after several tries, got it to download completely. Happens sometimes. Thanks Microsoft!

Makes me laugh!

Firstly, thanks all for your comments.

Personally I just like the sound of the Household Brigade...to be honest I could almost see a scenario where different officers are sitting around a table in Salisbury after the Brigade is formed debating which number to use and the senior man (a Guardsman obviously!) just thumps the table and says "Damnit, we'll just call it the Household Brigade and be done with it!"

That said, I think the most accurate title would probably be 32nd (Guards) Infantry Brigade or possibly 56th (London) Brigade. I think I could probably be persuaded to change it to 32nd Guards (which is also what was used in the excellent canon orbat on the etranger site).

Yep, you're right - it's deliberate...my thinking here is that the "regular" Squadrons will all be deployed on operations worldwide so Zulu Squadron is raised as an ad hoc unit to take under command the handful of Special Forces types still in the UK. I chose Z purely because it was the last letter in the alphabet, which I thought gave it a feeling of being "improvised" - if that makes sense?

Good point...

Again, good point...I'll rework that part...

And don't worry - there's no Lloydy, Spock or Diesel!

To be honest, my thinking for the Preston based marauder group was a) that I wanted to get away from calling every other marauder group the Butchers, the Headhunters, the Predators, etc, etc and b) I wanted to try and come up with something that suggested a hint of legitimacy about that group, particularly as they are fronted up by a pre war MP (the idea was loosely based on the relationship between the White Death and the Congressman (whose name escapes me) in Allegeheny Uprising)...so basically we know from reading the Regional Guide that the NPF are out and out marauders, but a group of PC's might not neccessarily know that. That kinda led me to the North Preston Front (there are a few other references to British pop culture dotted about here and there; maybe that one was a bit too tongue in cheek! :))

Cheers

Not at all - I like spotting the references and would usually include some in my own games.

Minor quibble, Leicester would have 7 Royal Anglian not 3WFR (who are based in Chesterfield & Mansfield).

My orbat's based on the real life pre Options for Change orbat (with a few tweaks), so I have 7 RAR going to Germany with the 2nd Infantry Division at the start of the war.

I have 3 WFR remaining in the UK in a home defence role; they get sent to the Birmingham area after the nuclear strikes to try and keep order, but break up as a cohesive military unit during 1998. Different groups head in different directions, with one finishing up in Leicester.

Attached is a copy of my 1996 orbat. The tweaks were based on a suggestion of LouieD's, namely that the large "Volunteer" Regiments (Lowland, Highland, Yorkshire, and Wessex) revert back to their original Regimental names, so 3rd Battalion, Yorkshire Volunteers becomes 3rd Battalion, Duke of Wellington's Regiment, etc). That results in a modest expansion of the TA as four additinal Battalions are formed. I also have 1 and 2 Bns, London Regiment being raised, but no 8th Queen's Fusiliers - 1 LONDON goes to to Germany, while 2 LONDON is tasked for home defence of London (and gets toasted on Black Thursday).

Cheers

Makes sense but I think you might need a reason why 3WFR head that way as it is the wrong way to go home (which is walkable). Maybe have a company based in Coventry who have a mission further east so are near Leicester when the nukes hit?

Yep, I take your point. Mind you, 3WFR had Companies based in Derby and Nottingham, both of which get nuked, so it is possible elements of both of those Companies might make for Leicester.

Perhaps simplest solution would be to have one Company based in Leicester at the end of 1997 and they decide to just stay in situ as it all kicks off elsewhere. Particularly if they are either the Derby or Nottingham Company, who effectively have no home to go to...

The RAF may still have a few aircraft for recon & liaison duty. The Vigilant T1 trainer (aka Grob G109) could be very useful

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grob_G_109

3WFR also have a HSF Coy which could be deployed to protect something there.

Brainwave - there is a range complex on the outskirts of Leicester not far from the main TA Centre (there is also a cadet Training Centre that could be being used as transit accommodation) - it was the one used in Full Metal Jacket - company that is based at east Midlands Airport has gone there down the M1 for range work.

Sounds good. The other solution that just occurred to me is that I think 7RAR had an HSF Company (E Coy?) which had detachments at Leicester and Lincoln.

Could be Leicester finishes up with a composite force which has elements of 7RAR's HSF Coy backed up by some elements of 3WFR. Maybe things are kicking off in Leciester in Dec 1997 and 3WFR troops are sent in to help 7RAR's HSF Coy keep order? Following the nuclear exchange perhaps 3WFR send a recce force to Nottingham and Derby which comes back and says "we're better off staying put boys." That sounds feasable to me....

There could also be assorted indivduals from the Defence Animal Centre at Melton Mowbray and the alternate RGHQ at Loughborough.

I'll rework that part...:)

Cheers

Cheers, Matt...I'll take a look at that.

Good work Rainbow Six

Hi Rainbow Six, had a good read through your articles. Good as always. Some ideas.

Timeline / Regional Guide
Nuclear Power Stations
Bradwell (East of England)
Chappelcross (Scotland)
Dungeness (South East England)
Hartlepool (North East England)
Heysham (North West England)
Sizewell (North West England)
Oil Refineries & Oil Storage Facilities
Hertfordshire (East of England)
Sullom Voe (Scotland)
Teeside (North East England)
Nuclear Facilities
Burghfield (South East England)
Capenhurst (North West England)
Chilton (South East England)
Culham (South East England)
Harwell (South East England)
Sellafield (North West England)
Winfrith (South West England)

All of these are likely to have survived intact as they were not targeted in the nuclear strikes on Britain. Nuclear power stations even partially operating would provide a lot of electricity by post-war standards.

Teeside Oil Refinery in the North East is fairly close to the North Sea oil rigs of which some are likely to be still operating. Its also just across the sea from the German North Sea ports and the BAOR. Fuel for shipping could bring a lot of British troops and heavy equipment back to Britain and consolidate HMG control of the North East and Scottish borderland fairly quickly.

Also in your version Birmingham survived, so some of the British car factories in the area might still be usefull. MG Rover at Longbridge, Land Rover and Jaguar at Solihull and Castle Bromwich, also Oxford, Goodwood and Sunderland are surviving automobile centres.

His Majesty's Forces

I'm assuming that in your version none of the BAOR divisions or component unit have been transferred back to England yet. Some RAF aircraft and maybe some other NATO aircraft could be held in storage on the isolated and relatively safe Orkney and Shetland Islands. Also I'd be certain that more than one RN nuclear attack submarine survived the war, although the others may not be based in British waters. Also its possible that at least one of the Vanguard SSBN's survived, maybe with a few missiles a well, as their area of operations in the North Atlantic south west of the GIUK gap would have been extremely hazardous for any sustained Soviet ASW effort. I also like the idea of one of the carriers surviving the war, HMS Ark Royal at Portsmouth. Others have also suggested the USS Theodore Roosevelt is also at Portsmouth with the British trying to find some nuclear fuel for her reactors.

The Security Services

MOD Police and Atomic Energy Authority Constabulary.

Cheers, RN7 - appreciate the feedback.


Good points - in my opinion the North East escaped the nuclear attacks relatively unscathed (although we don't know whether the area may have suffered heavily from conventional attack), and I have tried to reference that in the narrative where it mentions that under certain circumstances the North East could have the capability to rival HMG - what is lacking is a leader that can bring the region together (my vision for the area has several different leaders competing against each other, with each focused on his own fiefdom). Potentially they even have a highly effective army if they manage to win over the garrison at Catterick, whilst several of the facilities in the north west would be no doubt be attractive to North Preston Front even if, as you say, only partially operational.

As a bit of background here, when I started writing the Regional Guide (indeed when I first started this project a good number of years ago) my original intention was to go into a substantial level of detail on each region, that would have resulted in a Regional Guide that by itself would probably have stretched to a hundred pages. Unfortunately, I now have to be realistic and accept that I'm not a full time writer, and work and other commitments mean that I would never, ever have been able to see such a thing through to completion., so I've had to compromise...hence the "edited" version, which tries to condense each region into one - two pages...(oddly enough, though I live in Scotland, that section turned out to be one of the shorter ones!). I will take your suggestions on board, particularly the nuclear facilities, and will attempt to work the status of each into the text (even those away from nuclear targets may be non operational for various reasons), probably by way of adding them into the introduction to each region...

That's a good point about the car factories, although my vision of Birmingham is of somewhere that became very lawless very quickly after the nuclear exchanges, so a great many facilities that weren't attacked by Soviet missiles may have been burnt out or otherwise rendered useless by looters...Birmingham is not a good place to be in my T2K World...(BTW the sparing of Birmingham was intended to provide a non nuked urban location that could provide Armies of the Night type adventures, whereas London or Manchester both provide nuked urban locations). Again, the presence of the factory in Sunderland goes towards the North East's emergence as a regional power.

Yes, with the notable exception of 2 PARA, I've deliberately avoided having the BAOR brought back from Germany. The reason for that quite simply is that I personally think that the moment the BAOR gets back to the UK the game is effectively up for all of the various marauder and separatist groups - it may take some time, probably years, but ultimately the Army will be able to bring the country back under control (one has to consider here the relatively small size of the UK and the overwhelming firepower advantage the troops will have, particularly as unlike the Americans all references to the BAOR coming home suggest they will bring their AFV's and other heavy equipment with them).

Personally I didn't find the prospect of a UK under effective military control to be such an appealing option to write material for...I prefer the idea of the Government's control being relatively tenuous as I think that creates more interesting campaign opportunities (that was also the reason I "backdated" events to the 01st of June 2000).

I completely agree with you about the submarines, and in the text section on the Royal Navy have attempted to write it in such a way that anyone using the material has the option to include more subs (HMG claiming that it has an SSBN, etc)...to be honest part of the challenge lay in the fact that whilst the work is absolutely non canonical in regards to events in the UK, I didn't want to introduce anything that might be a major game changer in regards to the canon history of the War itself (if that makes sense - changing the name of the British PM from Underhill (iirc) to Montgomery has no direct affect on the Battle of Kalisz (for example); I think in the end the biggest deviation from canon is probably my interpretation of events on the island of Ireland). Whilst I do like the idea of having Ark Royal tied up alongside at Portsmouth in a really bad way I think the existence of a Carrier also falls under that general category.

Certainly I envisage the Hong Kong Squadron still having an operational sub, and I've also said in the past that I'm keen on the idea of a sub prowling the South Atlantic to deter any aggressive moves against the Falklands (although both of those would lie outside the scope of this piece).

With regards to aircraft, again I wanted to try and keep a balance of sorts, but would think it's certainly reasonable to assume that there are other operational aircraft at various locations...I've intentionally only listed those that are still under HMG's command, even if those in Yorkshire and Scotland are effectively grounded...I'll cover Honnington and Coltishall in more detail in a separate piece on the East Anglian enclave, but I think Conningsby (for example) would still have a very limited number of operational interceptors (albeit again grounded through lack of fuel).


Very good point - whilst I envisage that the majority of civilian police (I'm including these two forces in that category) will have been taken under military command in southern England, I will look into it further for other areas where they would make an interesting lawful or unlawful group.


Again, appreciate the feedback - any questions / comments, just fire away!

Cheers

Fair enough.

And let's not forget Dorset!

You could get a pretty good campaign just fromm the following

the oil in Dorset

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wytch_Farm

or the Steam Engines in Dorset

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swanage_Railway

or RM Poole
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Royal_Marines_Poole

or the Defence Petroleum Centre (just outside West Moors, Dorset)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/West_Moors

I would suspect that some of the units which used to support His Majesty's Royal Marines, (and the SBS) may have been moved from nearby RM Poole to garrison Wytch Farm. Alternatively, the Marines at the training base at Lympstone Commando (South of Exeter) could have simply relocated

Or these people ((Last one, I promise)
http://preservedtanks.com/Locations....ategoryId=3035

Yep, I used Wytch Farm as HMG's primary source of oil on the basis that I think it would be a hecukva lot easier using onshore fields than offshore, with securty coming from a detachment of Royal Marines from the Commachio Group, who have been reinforced by personnel from Lympstone. Given the vital national importance of Wytch farm I also threw in an RAF Regiment Air Defence Squadron to protect against any (admittedly unlikely) air attack. I figure that plus garrisons at Bovington and Blandford Forum ensure Wytch Farm is secure.

I didn't know about the Petroleum Centre. Cheers for that - that's good to know...it would make a good HQ for 9 Supply Regt, RLC and also fits in nicely with the idea of the oil coming from Wytch Farm...if my understanding of the process is correct in the absence of a refinery, dirty but usable fuel can be produced by boiling crude, which would then go to West Moors for distribution...

There's a good summary of Wytch Farm (and other fields) on this site
http://www.bpnsi.com/index.asp?id=73...2669643D313531

I didn't know about the Wareham oilfield. Presumably that is also going to be garrisoned.

Also. the fact that Wytch farm produces a lot of methane (natural gas) could be useful. I'd suggest that HMG would be looking to use this asset

Here's a video about "homemade" diesel in Nigeria. It does show the technique to be a pretty simple distillation process. I'm sure the scientists/engineers at Winfrith could develop something better

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jXeTw11fVpU

The oil fields of Lincolnshire

http://www.bbc.co.uk/lincolnshire/as...ilfields.shtml

The Grob 109 is an ideal post-apocalypse aircraft because it can use minimal fuel- given a good thermal day it only needs to use the engine for launch, then glide.
Gliders and sailplanes could even be used without any fuel- bungee launch from a suitable hillside, and again given suitable weather you've got a 150mph recon machine, which is almost invisible and silent...

Excellent work rainbow! Watching this grow over the last few years has been a an absolute pleasure and I am glad that you have come to a final(ish) product.

Your decision to go with the RLC rather than its predecessors for combat service support is to be commended. I am still bogged down with finding pre options for change RAMC RMP and a new one the Intelligence corps. Which will take rather a long time!

Did you ever get a full ORBAT For the regular RMP?

I enjoyed your articles on soviet activity and of course your items on south west UK. I came up with the idea for a new RACTR a few weeks ago and came on here to find you had already beaten me to it!:D

I look forward to future developments. What's your next main effort?

Cheers Dude...I'm glad you like it - it may have never got as far as it did if you and I hadn't bounced some ideas back and forwards a couple of years ago.

With regards to the RLC, I think it does make sense - I kinda reached the conclusion that even without Options for Change that was something that could have happened. I got some stuff from the various RMP Regiment's own official websites, most of which had quite good historical info, but they do seem to have went through more changes than a lot of other Corps! I struggled a bit on the Intelligence Corps as well, and eventually went with the theory that Int Corps personnel in southern England would come under the UKLF HQ headcount, so didn't list them separately.

BTW, with regards to the Royal Armoured Corps Training Centre Regiment, I've spent a considerable amount of time trying to think of a better name for them so if anyone has any suggestions, feel free to shout...I've thought about 5 Royal Tank Regiment but discarded that on the basis that it's a composite Regiment with tankies, Dragoons, Hussars, Lancers, etc all under command. I've also thought about something involving the Princess of Wales (bearing in mind in this work William is King and there is no Princess of Wales' Royal Regiment, so it seems to have a certain logic...Diana, Princess of Wales' Own Regiment, RAC...something like that).

I still need to complete the sections on marauders and large lawful groups, so that will probably be the next biggish thing...that should give a relatively rounded product...if I can get that done bythe end of the year I'll be reasonably happy....I haven't thought too far beyond that at the moment to be honest.

Cheers